Turkey: return to stability?

Abstract

Since the mid-1990s, Turkish domestic politics have all too often been plagued by a chaotic atmosphere. The most direct origin of this is to be found in the December 1995 parliamentary elections, which did not lead to any obvious governing coalition; quite to the contrary, a number of alternatives were possible, of which the majority were eventually attempted. As is by now well known, the largest party in the parliament became the pro-Islamist Welfare party (Refah Partisi, RP) which however received a mere 21 per cent of the votes, far from a majority. This one-fifth of the ballot, with the Turkish electoral system favouring large parties and the parties that do well in the Anatolian countryside, actually gave the RP 158 out of 550 seats in the new parliament, or almost a third of the seats.' By contrast, neither of the two parties of the democratic right which had dominated the last decade's Turkish politics managed to achieve a leading position - actually neither of them managed to supersede the other. Former Prime Minister Tansu Qiller's True Path Party (DYP, Dogru Yol Partisi) received a larger number of seats in the parliament than Mesut Yllmaz' Motherland Party (ANAP, Anavatan Partisi), but the ANAP had a higher number of ballots cast for it than had DYP.2 Hence both parties could still claim to represent the majority of the democratic right, something which further complicated their uneasy coexistence. This was particularly troubling for the political scene as before the elections speculations had been under way regarding a merger of the two parties under whichever would win the elections. It should be noted, nevertheless, that both parties received around 20 per cent of the votes each. Hence while the RP may have become the largest party in parliament, it is incorrect to speak of a 'triumph' of Islamism in the elections.3 The major political faction was still by far the democratic right, as it has been during virtually the whole history of the Turkish republic. Together the two democratic right parties received the support of over 40 per cent of the electorate, which would be well enough for a stable majority in the Turkish electoral system.4